About

It is what it is.

We are Delaware Liberal. We are a political news and opinion blog that concentrates primarily on local Delaware politics, but also on national politics. And yes, we are liberal, progressive and Democratic, and thus, our take on events will, unlike our mainstream media, have a liberal bias. But conservatives, Republicans, moderates, Libertarians, and Independents are welcome here. Have fun, and stop by often.

Rules of the road:

1. No Personal threats or intimidations of physical violence.

Political debate can get personal here, and we expect name calling at times. Hell, we even engage in it from time to time. But no one can ever be allowed to personally threaten violence in order to either win the argument or to shut up his or her opponent. We are not talking about general hyperbole here (i.e. Republicans should be round up and shot). While such general hyperbole is wrong, it is not bannable. All that will result is you being roundly condemned. I should know.
People making threats or intimations of violence against DL Commenters or Editors will be banned without warning.

2. No Outting

This is self explanatory. If you post a comment that reveals personal, private and identifying information concerning any Delaware Liberal contributor or commentator that uses an anonymous or pseudonymous user name or handle, you will be banned instantly with no recourse.

For the following categories of rules, instead of instant banning, the violating commenter will be given a warning and will lose posting privileges for 24 hours. The warning will be sent to the email you provide when posting your comment. If you provide a fake email, then we will embarrass you by posting the warning publicly in the comment thread. The offending comment itself will be deleted. Repeated violations of the below rules after the warning will eventually result in banning, but that will be at the discretion of the editorial board of Delaware Liberal.

3. No Vile bigoted statements

We are talking about racial, homophobic, sexist, ethnic, and anti-semitic slurs. We are not talking about profanity or profane name calling. Calling someone an “asshole” is ok. Calling someone a “fag” is not.

4. Stay On Topic

Delaware Liberal has gotten quite good at running a an Open Thread post. They usually run Monday through Saturday. If you have something to say that is not being covered in a current blog post, then please use the most recent Open Thread to add your comment. When having a debate in a blog post, please stay on topic. If you don’t, the editors of Delaware Liberal will move your comment to the latest Open Thread post. Sometimes we’ll edit the comment to say why we moved it, sometimes we won’t. If you continue to post off-topic comments in post threads, you will be banned at the discretion of Delaware Liberal.

5. Fair Use

Private and copyrighted material that does not belong to you should not be posted in its entirety on this blog without the express permission of the owner of that material. Fair use means that you may cut and paste a few sentences (paragraph or two for longer pieces) AND provide a link or detailed reference to the material. Posts containing entire articles that do not belong to you or that you post without the permission of the owner will be edited to delete that content. If you have the permission of the content owner to post his or her material, be prepared to demonstrate that in writing to DL Editors when asked. Persistently ignoring fair use rules will be cause for banning at the discretion of Delaware Liberal.

6. No Sockpuppetry

Sockpuppetry is using multiple names and/or email addresses to mislead fellow commenters, DL editors or to get around a banning. We ask you to pick one name (pseudonym or real) and post consistently under it, in all threads. DL editors do, as do our best commenters, and we won’t tolerate posters trying to mislead us. We will publicly tell DL readers what names are being used as sockpuppets and persisting in using multiple names is cause for banning.

It doesn’t matter much to us if you post under your real name or a pseudonym, as long as you use it to participate here as one established identity. Commenters who hijack a pseudonym will be banned.

7. Trolls, Asshats and Haters

We encourage lively, engaged discussion here. We aren’t especially interested in commenters whose main contribution is belligerence, flame war bait, insults, self-promotion, complaints about what we aren’t writing about, 9/11 trutherism, truthiness of the day or any of the other material that doesn’t contribute to lively, engaged discussion. If DL Editors think you are in the category of Troll, Hater or Asshat, and all you are doing is just tagging this site because you feel like it, you won’t be here for long.

We as contributors and owners of the site attempt to adhere to these standards as well. However, we will adjudicate any infractions of these rules outside of the public eye.